Bonga Bonga – A Tale Told in Two Parts
by pollywantsa
Summary: Wherein Jeff Tracy takes a holiday and Lady Penelope doesn't think he's very funny. Original Series and rated M.
1. Chapter 1

_This story is set in the Original Series universe and has been constructed around events that take place in the episodes 'The Duchess Assignment' and 'Atlantic Inferno', which, if you watch them in that order, make a very compelling suggestion. The story has been written in that order and contains a couple of scenes – expanded with artistic license and evil intent – from each episode, which die-hard desperadoes (like myself) will no doubt recognise. Cheerio! _:-)

* * *

**Bonga Bonga: A Tale Told In Two Parts**

* * *

**the first part**

* * *

'_Coffee?' _said a shimmer of blue silk in the corner of Jeff Tracy's eye.

'Hmm?' said Jeff, his attention diverted by a decades-old neuron that had unexpectedly sparked to life. Jump-started by that blue shimmer of silk, the neuron barrelled off down Jeff's synapses, tunneled into his childhood memories and emerged triumphant with 16-year-old Cousin Jeannie, with her freckles and her bangs and her overbite that she never got corrected. Cousin Jeannie was pretty, Jeff remembered, in a country corn-fed sort of way. And she was also older than him, and more developed in the places where girls do the bulk of their developing. And Jeff, unfortunately, with his plastic adolescent brain, was also prone to developments, only his were of the most awkward and heinously embarrassing kind.

It was his parents' fault, Jeff reasoned. He'd been young, and impressionable, and so goddamned _awkward,_ what with the hair sprouting beneath his armpits and hormones causing all sorts of eruptions on his face and in his underpants. Those self-same hormones would also cause his ears to flame red if a girl even so much as _looked_ in his direction, which must have been why his parents sent him to his father's sister's house that one, horrible summer – for the sheer expedient of tormenting Jeff's fragile, undeveloped, and adolescent mind.

What little Jeff remembered – because truth be told he'd suppressed quite a lot – was lovely Cousin Jeannie, ignoring him at the dinner table, pouting with her overbite and tsk-ing at his adolescent stupidity with her charming little lisp. Jeannie's satin bathrobe Jeff especially remembered. It was as blue as her blue-sky eyes and embossed all over with Chinese dragons, and maybe that bathrobe was the nucleus of Jeff's full-blown obsession for oriental art. It had also bestowed upon him an unfortunate predilection for women in bathrobes that even now, after all these years, occupied a sizeable portion of his non-thinking brain.

Brains. Jeff had one of those, and a fairly large one he assumed, since he'd risen meteorically from the Air Force to the Space Program and was the mastermind behind Tracy Aerospace as well as International Rescue. Actually, Jeff had two brains, if you counted the one inside his head as well as the awkward young man that he kept chained to a desk in the basement. No. Kidding. Jeff wouldn't do that. Who needed chains when you had the whole South Pacific ocean to deter an escape? Jeff grinned to himself, imagining what would happen if Brains ever tried to make a run for it – visions of the hapless young scientist, resplendent in his terry toweling hat and rowing a tin boat to freedom, always made him smile.

Huh. It was funny how the brain worked. Jeff dropped the pen he hadn't been using onto the paperwork he hadn't been reading, and leaned back in his chair to work the kinks out of his back. He hadn't given Jeannie a thought for years – they'd kinda lost touch after the kids all grew up – and suddenly, for no good reason, he found himself reliving the awkwardness of that summer, and Cousin Jeannie in that damn blue bathrobe.

Jeff rubbed at the knot that had resided at the base of his skull ever since the birth of his youngest son, and closed his eyes. 'I must be dying,' he muttered as his life passed before his eyes and one particular misadventure replayed itself again in his head: Cousin Jeannie at the bathroom door, standing at least a head taller than Jeff with her bee-sting bosoms perfectly positioned right in his line of sight, and the blue silk of her bathrobe threatening to part like the Red Sea before the staff of Moses. 'Dying,' he repeated with an audible groan, because that was better than the other option, which was that he was, most probably, plainly and simply horny.

'Excuse me, Mr Tracy?'

'What?' Jeff said, shaken from his reverie. He looked up to find Kyrano standing squarely right in front of him with the coffee pot. 'When did you get here?''

Kyrano didn't so much as blink. 'You said you were dying.'

Jeff chuckled and pushed his cup across the desk. 'Nothing wrong with your hearing, Kyrano.' He watched as Kyrano poured, not bothering to explain what he'd said or why – they'd known each other far too long for that kind of thing. And besides, Kyrano was psychic, you know.

'Would you like something to eat with your coffee?' Kyrano's robe shimmered as he poured. 'Mrs Tracy has been baking.'

'Oh yeah?' Jeff found himself eye-level with the blue silk of the older man's kimono – embossed with dragons, no less – and crossed his legs beneath his desk. 'What did she make?' That's right. Food has always been the time-honoured replacement for sex. Might be why Virgil was spreading out a bit around the middle.

Kyrano smiled an unreadable smile. 'She has reattempted the strawberry cake, at Mister Virgil's request.'

Jeff scowled. 'Remind me to have a talk to that boy.'

The smile stayed plastered to Kyrano's lips, oriental and inscrutable. He was the veritable Mona Lisa of Malaysia, only if Mona Lisa was a man and about fifty years older. 'Yes, Mr Tracy. I will ask my daughter to put it in your diary.'

'And tell Mother that nobody is to touch that cake until after they've had their dinner! People are getting too soft around here. All they do is sit around eating. This isn't a bakehouse you know!'

Kyrano's smile became a lot less inscrutable. He almost laughed. 'Yes, Mr Tracy.'

'Alright,' Jeff conceded without fully giving in. 'I know. I'm being ridiculous. I'm a bit crazy from staring at contracts all day.'

'Perhaps,' Kyrano rested the coffee pot on top of Jeff's desk, 'it is time for a holiday.'

'I'm _having_ a holiday,' Jeff shot back indignantly. He pursed his lips. 'I'm off to the London air show tomorrow, remember? And then New York after that.'

'You are going to New York on business,' Kyrano reminded him, in case Jeff had forgot.

'Yes, but before that I'm spending two days with Penny. Two days doing not much or nothing, or,' Jeff scowled again, suddenly remembering his last trip to London and the workout his credit cards had received, 'where Penny is involved, then spending too much time and money at art galleries and restaurants.'

'Two days is not a vacation, Mr Tracy.' Kyrano was implacable. If the man wasn't so goddamned zen he probably would have tsked. 'Two _weeks_ somewhere – '

'Sorry Kyrano, no can do. You know why.'

'The bakehouse,' Kyrano read from his store of inner fortune cookies, 'can take care of itself.'

Jeff chuckled. 'You might be right, Kyrano, but I'm not convinced that the boys are ready to go it on their own. At least not for more than a couple of days.'

'Your boys are capable young men. And Mister Scott commanded a squadron of twelve in the Air Force. I am sure he can manage International Rescue.'

Jeff tried hard to keep the mulishness from his voice. 'Scott isn't ready yet.'

Kyrano raised a grey eyebrow.

'Don't look at me like that.' Jeff leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers neatly together. 'Kyrano, do you know the difference between a fighter pilot and God?'

Kyrano shook his head.

'God doesn't think he's a fighter pilot.'

Kyrano didn't even blink.

Jeff sighed. 'It's a joke,' he explained. 'And also a truism, and unfortunately in this case it applies. You may think Scott's ready, and he has all the skills and leadership qualities I could possibly ask for, but all his successes mean that he's still full of that cock-sure Air Force mentality. It's in his blood, unfortunately, and it's going to take a lot more than I've got to beat it out of him.'

'I see,' Kyrano said. 'And if Mister Scott is not provided with opportunities to exercise his ability, or, as you say, to have it beaten out of him…'

'Alright, Kyrano. Point taken. I'll work on it.'

'Yes, Mr Tracy.' There was that inscrutable smile again. 'I shall finish packing your suitcase for London, now. Unless you would like to admire yourself in your Savile Row suit again?'

Jeff suppressed a sputter. 'I was checking it out for size! Though why I needed to buy a suit that cost about as much as a bucket of Glenlivet is anyone's guess. And as for that damn top hat!'

'It was Lady Penelope's request, as I recall.' Kyrano folded his hands into his sleeves. He always did that before broaching a difficult topic – Gordon had an idea that the old man kept a set of nun-chucks hidden up there in case of emergency. 'Your mother thinks Lady Penelope has an ulterior motive.'

'I've warned you about talking to my mother.'

'It was unavoidable.' Kyrano held out his hands – sans nun-chucks – to show Jeff the pruned tips of his fingers, and then folded them back into his sleeves. 'I have sliced a lot of strawberries today.'

Jeff chuckled sympathetically as Kyrano gamely soldiered on. 'We were talking about Lady Penelope,' he pressed, 'and her feelings for you.'

Jeff gaped. 'I don't know what you're talking about.' Oh yes he did. Seemed everyone on the island had an opinion on the matter, and he'd been dodging these kinds of conversations for months.

Kyrano shrugged and set the silk of his robe to shimmering again. 'Time to stop dodging.'

'How do you do that?' Jeff asked.

'Dodging?'

'No. Know exactly what I'm thinking.'

Kyrano sighed. His hands worked beneath his sleeves and Jeff hoped he was only scratching at his elbows and not reaching for the nun-chucks.

'I'm not dodging,' Jeff said. 'Not exactly. It's just that… well, it would never work between us.'

Kyrano stopped scratching. 'Why not, Mr Tracy?'

Jeff sighed. 'Kyrano old friend, I don't have enough fingers on my hands to be able to list all the reasons why.' Nevertheless he held up his fingers to try. ' One, she's too young; two, I'm too old; three, she's a titled aristocrat; four, I'm a country hick – '

'Your mother tells her friends in Kansas that you are a lonely bachelor and asks them if they have any available daughters – '

'_Stop talking to my mother!'_

A twinkle glinted in Kyrano's eyes. 'That time I was listening in.'

Jeff laughed out loud at that. He was still grinning as Kyrano scooped up the coffee pot and made a dignified retreat, his eyes lingering on the sashay of Kyrano's blue silk as it rippled out the door.

'What's with this place,' Jeff muttered as he returned to his paperwork, though he could hardly concentrate with the carousel of whirling thoughts that were jostling for attention in his head – blue silk and bathrobes and Lady Penelope, and the desperate spinsters his mother was dragging out of the woodwork back in Kansas. Jeff shivered – from what he remembered growing up, some of those spinster ladies had spiders living in their hair.

'Kyrano's right,' a disembodied voice said out of nowhere. 'You need a vacation.'

Jeff jumped at his desk. 'John? I thought you signed off?'

'_You_ signed off,' John told him from forty-two-thousand kilometres away._ 'I've_ been sitting here for an hour listening to your body making noises.'

'My body did not – ' Jeff closed his eyes and took a deep and long-suffering breath. 'What, exactly, _did_ you hear?'

'I heard you say the word _cock,'_ John replied, with same crisp authority he used when responding to distress calls. _Give me your location, ma'am, and by the way, I heard you say the word cock._ 'And something about ulterior motives and nobody getting cake until after dinner. A bit harsh, but fortunately I'm far enough away that I can disobey you without consequences. I'm glad you're going to London. You need to do something for yourself for a change.'

'_Every_body's got an opinion,' Jeff muttered into his collar.

'You know the microphone is right on your desk?'

'I _said,'_ Jeff barked towards the vid-screen embedded in John's portrait on the wall, 'everybody's got an opinion!'

'And I heard you the first time!' John smiled beatifically down from the vid-screen, all flaxen hair and rosy cheeks and looking like a snowdrop angel beaming down from heaven. He laughed out loud at Jeff's discombobulation, making Jeff wish for the chubby-cheeked 10-year-old of yore to make a reappearance – Jeff was hard-pressed at times to see any sign of that gentle and trusting child inside this lanky, sarcastic and argumentative young man.

'Sign off, John.'

John swiped distractedly at the curl of golden hair that graced his forehead. _Snowdrop angel my ass._ 'I mean it, Dad. You need a break. I'm glad Penelope has talked you into it. Although I think Grandma is right. Penelope definitely has an ulterior motive – '

'Sign off, John.'

' – but is that such a bad thing? She's beautiful and she likes you and _every_body knows about it because she's as subtle as a sledgehammer. Plus it's about time you gave your children a new mother to kiss them all goodnight – '

'_Sign off!'_

John grinned down at him and there they were, just for a fleeting instant, those two cherubic rosy cheeks that Jeff remembered so well.

Aww. How could he stay mad with that?

* * *

Jeff resisted the impulse to duck as a squadron of Boeing's next-gen combat craft screamed over the airfield, because ducking was harder than it ought to be in a bespoke Savile Row suit, not to mention a goddamn top hat that kept threatening to topple off every time he moved his head.

'Say, Penny.' Jeff lifted a hand to make sure the hat was still positioned squarely on top of his bonce. 'What do you get when you cross a snake with a plane?'

Penelope looked blankly at him. Possibly she was considering the logistics. Jeff pressed on regardless.

'A Boeing constrictor,' he finished, deadpan.

Not a muscle moved on Penelope's perfectly powdered face. Parker's face, however, was a whole other kettle of fish. His oversized features crinkled into a smile as he barked a laugh.

'Good h'one, sir.' Parker nudged Jeff in the ribs with a conspiratorial elbow. 'W'hat do you get w'hen you cross h'a plane with h'a magician?' He waited the requisite five seconds before delivering the punchline. 'H'a flying sorcerer!'

'Oh, Parker,' Penelope said disapprovingly before Jeff could laugh.

Parker's face fell, and so did Jeff's – he'd been about to tell the one about the student pilot flying through a rainbow. Instead he watched as Parker sloped off dejectedly towards the commissary tent and then turned his attention back to the airfield, looking through his binoculars and deciding to try out his British accent instead. 'Bang on jolly good show,' he mangled through the side of his mouth. 'How'm I doing, Penny?'

'Oh. Splendid,' she said, looking around to make sure nobody was near enough to hear.

_Splendid! _A swell of pride infused Jeff's body. He repeated her intonation inside his head, trying to catch the emphasis she'd placed on the consonants so he could trot it out later. Perhaps at dinner, over venison or veal.

'Say,' he said, lifting the binoculars to his eyes to watch as two RAF aircraft passed over the field. 'This is what I've been wanting to see. It's the new carrier craft.'

Penelope raised her opera glasses to her eyes. The glasses had surprised him when she'd pulled them out of her purse, but he'd come to understand that they were purely ornamental – an eccentric but charming addition to her outfit. Opera glasses at an air show, Jeff considered, were as ridiculous as top hats. One day he'd take her to an air show in Kansas, a _proper_ one, and he'd make her wear a checkered shirt and a baseball cap and jolly well bang-on drink bloody beer.

'I say,' Penny said as the smaller of the jets came down to hover over the larger craft. 'Isn't that a bit close? What are they going to do, Jeff?'

'Just wait and see,' he replied as the canopy of the smaller craft exploded upwards, followed by a tiny figure from the cockpit. 'It's the pilot, I guess. The other machine's going to guide the two of them down.'

Jeff didn't follow the tiny figure as the parachute unfolded and drifted the pilot to earth. Instead he focussed on the two aircraft as they locked themselves together and came in for a double landing. It was an interesting concept, talked about in aerospace circles for months, but now that he'd seen it he doubted it would be of much practical use. The British Air Force, however, had an entirely different perspective, judging from the conversation between two officers that were standing behind him. Jeff had been catching snippets of the two men talking for the last quarter hour, but now he couldn't help but listen in.

'_Dash clever, what!' 'Absolutely first class. First class!' 'You know, International Rescue are doing this sort of thing all the time. They ought to have them on – '_

Jeff didn't hear the rest. He was too busy eyeballing Penelope as she awkwardly opened her umbrella to hide herself from the officers. He smiled at her uncharacteristic ungainliness and lifted his brochure to hide his face. They laughed. They were stupid. And maybe, thanks to Parker's far-too-frequent trips to the commissary, they were very slightly drunk.

* * *

It had been a long time since Jeff Tracy had felt the effects of alcohol to this degree. His head was buzzing, and his lips and tongue had expanded to five thousand times their normal size, so that he found himself reclining in the back of FAB1 as they drove home after dinner, constantly licking at his oversize lips with his oversize tongue and smiling a watery-eyed smile at Penelope's profile in the moonlight. Except it wasn't moonlight, he realised. It was the porch light of Creighton-Ward Manor, and they'd been stopped at the front entrance for twenty minutes already, giggling like school kids in the back of Penny's car.

'Don't tell my mother,' Jeff said around his thick tongue, 'but I think I'm a little drunk.' He was trying to avoid words that had 's' in them. He was having only moderate success. 'It wass the champagne that did it,' he told her. 'And you know what they ssay about champagne...'

'No, Jeff.' She smiled at him indulgently, and her mouth was close enough that he could see the lipstick caked in the corners and smell the Bollinger that lingered on her breath. 'What _do_ they say about champagne?' she asked.

'No champagne,' he grinned stupidly, 'no gain.'

She giggled, but he didn't know if it was at his pun or his state of inebriation. He hoped it was the pun. He was too inebriated to tell if it were the other.

'I've never seen you like this before, Jeff.' Penny reached out a hand and brushed her fingers across his sand-papery end-of-the-day bristles. There was a loud scratchy noise on the inside of Jeff's head. 'I've seen you drink half a bottle of Jameson with no effect whatsoever,' she said.

The grin fell from his face. 'That's because,' he told her soberly, 'my relationship with whiskey is on the rocks.'

That made her laugh. Maybe he _was_ funny, after all. Or maybe he should have stopped at one.

'Some people,' he said to his captive audience, 'say I drink like a fish. But I just tuna them out.'

'I see,' Penny said as he took her hand in his and inspected her fingernails in the dim light. 'I always wondered where Alan and Gordon got their odd sense of humour.'

'Odd?' Jeff was taken aback, and the mortification must have shown on his face.

'Oh no, darling,' she said. 'Don't be upset. I only meant, well, it's not British, is it. There are some things that simply don't translate.'

'No,' he said, dropping her hand like the proverbial wet fish. 'I guess not. I mean, I don't understand it when Parker starts going on about bristols and khyber passes and – '

Now it was Penelope's turn to be mortified. 'Parker said _what?'_

Parker's sleep-tousled head made an indignant appearance over the top of the front seat. 'I 'ave _never,_ m'lady, _h'ever,'_ he protested, 'used the word _bristols_ h'in front of h'any of your g'hests!'

'Parker!' Jeff exclaimed. 'When did _you_ get here?'

* * *

He'd felt pretty damn sheepish the morning after the night before, what with all his stupidities magnified in the gloom of the waxy, foggy, chilly, cold and misty British morn. Even Lil's smoky bacon and eggs hadn't helped, the bacon fat coating the inside of his mouth with a layer of grease that not even hot coffee could wash away. Jeff stood distractedly in the vestibule of the New Hayward, waiting for the coffee to kick in and licking at the inside of his teeth.

'Oh, Jeff.' Penelope interrupted his licking. 'Must you fly off to New York tomorrow?'

'I'm afraid so,' he replied, with the taste of the bacon still on his tongue. 'All good things must come to an end.' He'd promised himself no more puns for the remainder of this visit, but he could still trot out a proverb now and then. Penny didn't know that, of course, and she visibly tensed when he opened his mouth to speak, and just as visibly relaxed when he was done.

Jeff glanced at her out the corner of his eye – he wasn't sure where it was going wrong. His wife had loved him for his humour – she'd had to, because when they'd met he'd had precious little else. But Penny was turning out to be a whole other kettle of fish. Maybe the class distinction was too much – the farm-boy and the titled lady was never going to be a match made in heaven. Jeff sighed inwardly – he'd been making a fool of himself, and he was glad that their grope in the back of the FAB1 had ended so precipitously. Fortunately for all of them, Fate had intervened to end this thing before it had properly begun.

'What are you going to show me now?' he asked Penelope – he'd chirped up now that he'd made his decision, and the coffee was finally starting to kick in. Life, Jeff reflected with satisfaction, had returned to a state of blessed equilibrium.

'Well, Jeff,' she replied, hanging herself from his arm like a piece of blonde, exotic jewellery, which was somewhat distracting to said newly returned equilibrium. 'This is an exhibition of art from the last century.'

They were standing in the White Room, and Jeff looked around at the so-called art on the walls and suppressed a grimace – he much preferred the predictability of the orientalists to the unplanned disorder of the abstract modernists. Penny steered him toward an eight-foot splash of paint that reminded him of the time Ducky Driscoll threw up freeze-dried blueberry pie in zero-G.

'You see,' Penny said as they moved past the freeze-dried vomit, 'I promised an old friend of mine that I would come along. Poor Duchess of Royston, she's fallen on rather hard times, I'm afraid.'

'I'm sorry to hear that.' Jeff surveyed the contents of the room and decided with finality that he did not like the art of the late twentieth century. 'What went wrong?' he asked. _With the art world, that is._

Penny paused to admire a nebulous splatter of black, gold and grey. 'She went to the south of France to ah, try and corner the market there. But the stakes,' Penny added, 'were rather against her.'

'What a shame,' Jeff said. The splatter was similar to one that Penny had coerced him into buying a few years earlier, a vomitous blob that had cost him the equivalent of a bottle of good Glen Fiddich. Scott said the painting reminded him of a camel's bloody diarrhoea, so Jeff had Kyrano mount it right between the sconces of the entry to Thunderbird 1's hangar, and right at Scott's eye-level.

'Is there anything I can do?' Jeff asked Penny, to be polite.

'Oh Jeff, if only there were. She's had to lend her last precious possession to the gallery to try and recoup a few of her losses.' Penelope indicated the painting on the far wall. 'That's it, over there.'

It was the only painting on that particular wall, and the only one in the room that made any kind of visual sense. A realistic gazelle looked out from a surrealistic background – a rocky outcrop, a red desert, and a line of Corinthian columns that faded into the distance. Unfortunately two middle-aged men in dresses and bad wigs were planted squarely in front of the painting, which prevented Jeff from taking in the full effect.

'_Portrait of a Gazelle,'_ Jeff read as the bad wigs teetered on their heels and turned to display their brightly-made-up faces. Jeff valiantly restrained himself from staring as they tottered away, despite the ankle-hair that poked through their pantyhose and the bow legs of the redhead. 'I think I've got it, Penny,' he said, as proud of his self-restraint as of his sudden idea to help the Duchess.

'What do you mean, Jeff?'

Jeff's metaphoric cape flapped in a metaphoric wind. 'I think I know how I can help the Duchess out of her difficulties.' Turned out the bow-legs on the redhead had reminded him of a colleague. 'There's someone in New York that I've just got to go and see.'

'Oh, Jeff!' Penelope nuzzled up close against him. It was nice, but he kinda hoped she'd stop. He was trying to maintain his equilibrium.

* * *

'If you w'hould t'hake your seat, sir.' Parker stood expectantly behind the horsehair dining chair and waited with an arched eyebrow for Jeff to sit down in it. He was still shitty about the bristols incident, Jeff could tell.

Jeff hovered his ass tentatively over the seat, fully expecting Parker to whip it out from under him. Instead the chair smacked into the back of his legs and folded him at the knees. 'Oof,' he said as he collapsed heavily into the chair.

'Jeff darling, are you alright?' Penelope gazed solicitously towards him from the far end of the dining table.

'Er, yes,' he replied as Parker flapped the napkin noisily in his face and then dumped it in his lap. Jeff locked eyes with his hostess and waited silently until the butler-cum-chauffeur had left the room.

'He's angry at me,' Jeff told Penny as he reached for his water glass. 'I'll probably find a spider in my bed when I turn in.'

'Parker would never!' Penny protested. And then she laughed. 'Well, maybe he would.' She lowered the blue-painted lids of her big, blue eyes. 'Of course, you could always sleep in _another_ bed.'

Jeff choked and noisily thunked the glass back down on the table. 'I, ah, wouldn't want to trouble you.' He brought the napkin up to wipe the water that had dribbled down his chin.

'No trouble at all.' Penelope smiled as charmingly as a sledgehammer. 'It would be my absolute pleasure.'

Emphasis, Jeff noted, on the pleasure. He reached for the glass again – anything to avoid the direct gaze of her eyes.

'Jeff.' Penny watched as he gulped at his water. 'You haven't touched the champagne.'

'Er, no,' he said. And he didn't intend to, either – not after what it did to him last night. Equilibrium, remember?

'Would you like to try the Glenlivet?' she asked him. 'I could call Parker...'

Jeff gazed longingly at the alcohol arrayed across the sideboard. 'Don't trouble the man,' he said, rising from the chair and making his way across Penny's spacious dining room. 'I can get it myself.' He poured himself a third, glanced across the room to make sure she wasn't looking at him, gulped it down and then poured another. 'Would you like anything while I'm here?'

'No thank you.' Penelope raised her champagne glass so that the cut crystal glittered in the candlelight. 'It's your last night in London,' she said, 'and I just know it's going to be a _special_ one.'

Jeff halted halfway across the ornate carpet, returned to the sideboard and scooped up the bottle of Glenlivet by the throat. He smiled awkwardly as he settled back into his seat – funny, he'd never realised how uncomfortable horsehair chairs could be – and positioned the bottle within arm's reach.

'Ahem.' He cleared his throat. 'I've lined up a meeting with Dandridge tomorrow to discuss the Duchess's painting.'

'How marvelous, Jeff. I really hope Mr Dandridge will agree to the proposition.'

Jeff took a sip of the whisky. 'That Dandridge is a funny guy,' he said. 'He's into automation, you know. Automates everything. I swear he'd marry a robot if they ever made it legal.' He laughed and she politely joined in, her polished teeth glinting like a row of pearls between her glossy pink lips.

Emboldened, Jeff said 'do you know what robots like to eat?'

'I'm sure I don't.' Penny lifted the champagne to her lips.

'Microchips!' he finished with an internal _ba-da-boom._

Penny drained her glass in one gulp.

Jeff watched as a half glass of Perrier Jouet disappeared down her delicate throat, and her lips weren't even wet. 'That's one of Brains' favourites,' he explained lamely.

'And I'm sure it was very funny, Jeff.' Penny smiled at him with her perfectly painted mouth. 'But I _had_ hoped we could talk about something else tonight. About _us.'_

'Oh,' he said. 'I see.' He sculled down the remainder of the whisky – turned out he could drink from a glass without getting his lips wet, too. 'Well, you're doing a fine job, Penny. International Rescue couldn't get by without you – '

'No, Jeff.'

It was the way she said his name – that throaty injection of air that made him squirm in his seat.

'I meant _us_ – ' she was saying with that same breath-filled inflection.

Jeff squirmed again, grimacing painfully when the horsehairs pushed up through the cushion and poked him in the ass. 'Penny…'

'Jeff… '

'Penny… '

_Bam! _The double-doors to the dining room banged open and made Jeff jump.

'D'hinner,' Parker announced momentously, 'h'is _served!'_

* * *

'We never,' Penny slurred gracefully as she groped for the hall lights, 'had the chance to finished our conversation.'

Jeff silently thanked the gods that Parker had elected to make dinner a threesome.

'And there's so much,' Penny continued, blinking bleary-eyed when the lights finally came on, 'that I wanted to talk to you about.'

'Maybe we can talk tomorrow,' Jeff said, steering her straight as she veered off-course down the hall. 'Before I leave for the airport.'

'But I _want,'_ she paused for breath and then delicately hiccoughed, 'to talk to you _now.'_

'It's late,' Jeff hedged. 'And I've got an early flight.'

'Well, then.' Penelope paused at her bedroom door. 'Goodnight Jeff,' she breathed, with the heady scent of champagne on her breath.

'Goodnight, Penny.' He looked down into her upraised eyes. They were bleary and bloodshot and she was going to regret every last glass in the morning.

'Are you sure you won't come in,' she tried again, 'so we could have that conversation?'

Jeff shook his head. She looked so delectable, standing there with her lidded, come-hither eyes, and her hair just a tiny bit a-skelter. 'I'm sure, Penny.'

'But are you _really_ sure,Jeff?' Penelope leaned unsteadily against the bedroom door, licked at her lips with her delicate tongue and then lurched most indelicately towards him.

'Whoa,' he said, catching her before she could fall and then trying to stand her up straight again. He was beginning to wonder if he would have to undress her and put her to bed, or if it was okay for her to sleep in her make-up and pantyhose.

'Thank you, Jeff.' She tottered against him in her heels. 'Always the gentleman.' She reached up to stroke his sandpapery cheek. Penelope was nothing if not persistent. 'Are you sure you won't come in?'

He smiled ruefully down at her. He'd made up his mind, but she was taunting him with the look in her eyes and the heat from her body. He imagined his hands settling on her tiny waist and pulling her hard against him – she would like it rough, he imagined. There was something about the way she always fixated on his bristles, as if she liked her men rougher around the edges than those hairless British lords.

'I'm sure,' he said.

'But what about last night?' she asked, her hand falling away as the rejection finally made its way through the haze of the champagne. 'In the car?'

'Last night I was drunk,' he apologised. 'I wasn't thinking straight.'

'Are you thinking straight tonight?'

His lips twisted apologetically. 'Probably not. But tonight _you're_ drunk.'

She pouted and moved closer towards him. 'Am I?'

'You sure are.' Jeff couldn't help but laugh. 'But there's more to it than that,' he said, hoping she was sober enough to understand what he was trying to say. 'I've had some time to think. I enjoy your company Penny, very much, but I'm starting to regret mixing business with pleasure.'

Her fingers curled into the lapels of his jacket. 'But they don't _have_ to mix, Jeff.'

He blinked down at her. 'I don't think I understand.'

She rose on her toes to kiss him, her lips soft and her lipstick tasting of pink. 'I promise,' she whispered seductively, 'that while I'm pleasuring you, you won't have _time_ to think about business...'

'Penny!'

She laughed at the scandalised look on his face. 'Don't be so surprised,' she said, her hands slipping under his jacket. 'I know a few things.'

'Penny.' Jeff bit back a groan of genuine regret. 'Please don't. I _can't…'_

'But you _can,_ Jeff.' She kissed him again, deeply and passionately and leaving him gasping like a landed carp.

'Penny,' he said, his protest muffled by her tongue._ 'Please.' _He laid his hands on her shoulders and reluctantly eased her away from him. 'I'm sorry. I can't. _We_ can't – ' He shook his head. The sledgehammer had hit a stone wall, and it positively, absolutely, was not going to break.

* * *

The drive to the airport was nowhere near as fun as the last time Jeff had sat in the back seat of the FAB1, but it was, he could vouch, even more awkward.

Jeff turned from his contemplation of the back of Parker's head and glanced across the seat at Penelope, dressed in trousers and a silk shirt and slumped heavily against the arm-rest with her sunglasses plastered firmly to her face. She was a little car-sick and Jeff couldn't help but sympathise – she'd looked a tad seedy over her oats and toast in the morning, and although he'd caught her gulping down a Bloody Mary just after breakfast, the old hair-of-the-dog did not appear to be working.

Jeff cleared his throat but Penelope didn't budge. Parker, however, swiveled his head as the limousine pulled to a halt.

'We've h'arrived, M'lady,' the chauffeur announced.

Penelope pulled herself upright in her seat. 'Thank you, Parker.' She turned to show Jeff the impenetrable lenses of her sunglasses. 'Well, Jeff.'

'Penny,' Jeff said as the car door swung open and Parker's head appeared in the opening.

'H'I'll just collect your luggage, sir.' Parker fixed him with a stare before disappearing around the rear of the vehicle.

Jeff tried to make light. 'He's still pissed at me,' he joked to Penny. There was no movement on the blank slate of Penelope's face. Jeff slid from the back seat and closed the car door. 'I'll call you,' he said into the open window. 'Let you know what happens with Dandridge.'

'Oh yes,' Penny replied vaguely. 'The Duchess's painting.'

Jeff straightened and looked at the world around him. A grey day, and a sporadic wind that carried with it tiny little drops of rain – a far cry from the happy-go-lucky sunshine of the air-show just two days earlier. Jeff bent down to the window again.

'Penny,' he said. 'What happened last night. You understand, don't you?'

Penny took off her sunglasses and showed him the blood-shot whites of her eyes. 'Oh yes, Jeff,' she replied ominously before smiling the sick smile of the seedy. 'Of course, darling. Whatever you say.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Bonga Bonga: A Tale Told In Two Parts**

* * *

**the second part**

* * *

'These binoculars are fantastic,' Jeff said to nobody in particular. He was standing at the villa's balcony doors with his latest purchase plastered to his face, whiling away the time as he stared out at the big blue South Pacific sea. 'There's a yacht out there. Must be a hundred kilometres away and I can still read the name written on the side.'

'Oh yeah?' Gordon piped up from the other side of the lounge. 'Can you see any women in bikinis?'

'And what if he can?' Alan chimed in. Jeff's youngest was lounging idly in a full set of tennis whites, though it was clear he had no intention of playing tennis today. Alan took a sip of his shandy and grinned across at Tin-Tin in her matching outfit. God, Jeff hated it when the pair of them played dress-ups.

Emboldened by the beer mixed into his lemonade, Alan continued with his goading. 'What would you do, Gordon? _Swim_ out there?'

Gordon snorted. He was ensconced with Brains over a game of chess and his eyes were locked firmly on the board. 'I've got a boat and a submarine,' he replied as he languidly positioned his rook to box-in Brains' king. 'Why would I want to swim?'

'So you're saying you'd go out there?'

'If he can see women then yeah, I will.'

'Liar.'

'_Dad!' _Gordon bellowed out loudly and making Brains jump. 'Can you see any women on that boat? Bikinied or otherwise, I don't care.'

'Oh for Pete's sake,' Scott muttered from his position on the couch, his nose buried intently in a dog-eared paperback.

'I _wish_ there were women on that boat,' Jeff said without lowering his binoculars, 'so I could get rid of the lot of you.'

Virgil sniggered. He was at his easel, painting a dead tree on a landscape that could only be described as bleak. He was also wearing a white plaid shirt that was covered in red and yellow stains. Those stains could have been paint, or they could have been the ketchup and mustard he'd had on his hamburger at lunch – with Virgil it was always hard to tell.

The phone rang. Or, more accurately, the eyes on Lady Penelope's portrait lit up, signalling a call. Jeff turned from his surveillance of the yacht.

'Go ahead, Penny,' he said, trying to act natural. There was a fine line, he had discovered in the awkward weeks since London, between acting and overacting. 'How's Australia looking?'

'I've just blown up a mountain,' Penelope said, the statement making Virgil's paintbrush veer completely off the canvas.

'You've done _what?' _Jeff asked.

'Oh no,' she said. 'Don't worry. I opened a new project – they're building a road through the mountains. I'm now going on to my farm. An idea has occurred to me.' She paused for effect and injected a breathy, husky tone into her voice. 'It concerns _you, _Jeff.'

Jeff's eyeballs slid shiftily around the room. 'What's on your mind, Penny,' he asked, trying not to sound alarmed.

'Well,' she said, 'as far as I can remember, you haven't had a vacation for at least eighteen months.'

'Yeah, but – ' he said, wondering if she'd been so drunk that she couldn't recall those two days in London and that clumsy fumble outside her bedroom door.

Penny ignored the protest. 'I think you should join me here in Australia and spend a few days on the farm. I'll make certain you're not disturbed and you can relax completely._ Now,' _she said in a tone that would brook no argument, 'when can I expect you?'

'Well,' Jeff hedged as Scott lowered his book and swiveled around on the couch to look at him. 'It's not that simple, Penny. An emergency call could come through at any time. I've got to be here to organise things – '

'We'll still _be_ here,' Scott supplied helpfully. 'And we know the procedure.'

'Yes, Father.' Virgil turned to join the discussion – he had a paintbrush gripped in each hand from trying to fix the mishap Penny had caused. 'I agree with Lady Penelope. It's time you had a rest.'

'What _is_ this?' Jeff countered defensively. 'A plot to get rid of me? I tell you I don't _need_ a rest!' He glared around at the six pairs of eyes that were pointedly skewering him. Seven, counting Penny on the screen.

'You see, Jeff, the boys agree with_ me.' _Penelope positively sounded smug. 'Now, I'll expect you at my farm this evening. I _insist_ you come,' she finished like the goddamn Queen of Sheba before promptly signing off.

'Well how do you like that? She closed down on me.' Jeff looked to Alan for support, but the little shit was concentrating on his shandy.

'Maybe you got her mad, Dad?' Scott was looking curiously at him. 'She _was_ thinking of _you,_ you know.'

'That's right,' Virgil agreed. Well, of course he would agree, the sycophant. He was holding three paintbrushes now, because two, apparently, hadn't been enough. 'She was trying to help.'

'I _know_ all that!' Jeff barked. 'And it was a great thought,' he added grudgingly as Virgil rolled his eyes and turned back to his easel. 'But you boys realise the problem, don't you?'

Scott buried his nose back in his book.

'Well!' Jeff said at the snub. He cast blindly around the room for support. 'Alan! Tin-Tin! You understand that I have to be here, don't you?'

'Sure, Dad.' Alan had finished his drink and Tin-Tin was waving her racquet expectantly in the air. 'Now if you'll excuse us, Tin-Tin and I are gonna play tennis.'

'_Sure _you are,' Virgil muttered to his canvas.

'Gordon!' Jeff ignored Virgil's mutterings. 'Brains!' He was grasping at straws now – Brains wouldn't have heard a word of what was going on, and Gordon was no longer interested because nobody had mentioned women.

'It's not that I don't wanna go,' Jeff whined, watching as Brains lifted a hand to save his king and Gordon tensed ready to smack the scientist's hand away at the first false move. 'It's in case of an emergency…'

Brains wisely decided against the move and lowered his hand back down to the table.

'Okay _okay!'_ Jeff exploded. 'I'll _go_ to Australia! I'll take a vacation,' he added petulantly, 'if that's what you all want.'

'Well that's _great_ Dad!' Scott fairly leapt off the couch. The only time he ever moved that fast was when the dinner bell rang – talk about Pavlovian. 'Forget International Rescue for a while.'

'I'll ask my father to pack your bags,' Tin-Tin offered, and far too eagerly.

'The first problem,' Scott studiously ignored his father's deepening scowl, 'is who's gonna take your place, Dad?'

'Well,' said the sycophant, 'that's gotta be _you, _Scott. You're the eldest.'

'Well, that's swell of you guys to put me in the hot seat.' Scott fumbled like he'd just won an Academy Award and had forgotten to bring a speech. 'But my job is flying Thunderbird 1.'

'Now hold on boys,' Jeff said, because this was getting out of hand. 'I'm still giving the orders around here – I'm not gone yet, you know.' He glared around at the expectant faces of his sons as he hastily worked up a plan – there was no backing out now. 'Scott, you're next in line, so you'll have my place. Virgil will remain in charge of Thunderbird 2, and Gordon Thunderbird 4.'

Gordon glanced up briefly from the chessboard. He'd heard his name, but since there was no further mention of women he returned his attention to Brains and his cheating.

'That only leaves you, Alan,' Virgil said. 'John's just begun his term of duty in the space station.'

'You mean I've gotta handle Thunderbird 1?' The kid sounded genuinely distressed. Possibly even terrified.

'That's the obvious choice,' Jeff said with the same trembling of the knees he'd felt when he'd handed over the keys to Alan's first car. 'Only rarely do we have to use Thunderbirds 1 and 3 on the same operation. You will control whichever craft is required.' _And God help us all,_ he thought as he fought the urge to genuflect.

'Yeah,' Scott agreed. 'That figures, Alan. You're used to high speed. I guess you take over my old job...' He trailed off. He sounded wounded at the thought of somebody taking over Thunderbird 1 so fast, which made Jeff a little happy – but only on the inside.

'Well. That's settled then.' Jeff looked around at his sons' expectant faces, his mind flashing back to the first time he'd left them alone in the house as teenagers. He suddenly felt a little sick. 'Errr,' he said, still desperately trying to postpone the inevitable. 'I'll just check things with John.' Jeff plopped behind his desk and activated John's portrait comm on the wall, settling back in his chair when his middle-child's face filled the screen.

'International Rescue from Thunderbird 5,' John said in that crisp, curt way that he had. The kiss-curl was gone from his forehead, Jeff noted. He must have taken up a new carton of gel for this rotation. 'What's up, Father?'

'Penny has persuaded me to take a short vacation in Australia,' Jeff told him.

'Gee that's great, Dad!' John didn't even smirk. 'I figure it's about time you had a rest.'

'Yeah,' Jeff replied dubiously. 'Mmm,' he said, waiting for John to start on again about the boys needing a new mother to kiss them all goodnight. Surprisingly, nothing happened. Except that Scott started crowding Jeff behind the desk in his haste to get into the chair.

* * *

Sometimes Jeff Tracy regretted that he'd had sliding doors installed in the villa's bedrooms. Times like this made a fella long for a really good hard _slam._

'Well!' he said after his bedroom door had leisurely slid itself open and finally allowed him to get in. 'You all got what you wanted – I'm taking a damned vacation!'

Kyrano looked up from the suitcase he'd laid out open on Jeff's bed. 'Yes, Mr Tracy.' He lifted a pair of bathrobes into the air, one in each hand. 'Which robe would you like to take to Bonga Bonga?'

'The burgundy one!' Jeff barked.

The bathrobes stayed hanging in the air.

'Yes!' Jeff snapped. 'I know it's old-fashioned and it's ugly but the uglier the better – _that's_ the one I'm taking! And I want the flannel pyjamas too! It gets cold in the outback, you know!'

Kyrano's expression altered not a whit. He laid the robes on the bed and bent to remove Jeff's tan silk pyjamas from the case. 'The flannel pyjamas,' Kyrano repeated as he returned the silk pyjamas to the dresser. 'The ones with the patches on the elbows, or the ones with the hole in the crotch?'

'It doesn't matter, because I'll be in bed _sleeping_ in them!'

'Yes, Mr Tracy.' Kyrano returned with the pyjamas – the ones with the hole in the crotch. He was daring Jeff to pull his head in.

Jeff's glare softened. He even allowed himself a chuckle. 'Alright, Kyrano. Point taken.' He sighed far more melodramatically than a man on the other side of middle-age should, and flopped himself down on the edge of the bed. 'I don't want to go to Bonga Bonga and I'm taking out on you.'

Kyrano folded the pyjamas and placed them in the case, and then set about folding the robe. 'This isn't just about leaving Mister Scott in charge, is it?'

'No,' Jeff grumped. 'It isn't. It's going to be just me and Penny and the sheep on that ranch – makes me feel like a goddamn lamb going to the goddamn slaughter.'

Kyrano held up a pair of Jeff's old slippers. 'Are these ugly enough, Mr Tracy?'

'Yes, goddammit!' Jeff's glare re-ignited. 'She's got ulterior motives, I know it. Why else would she invite me all the way out to the middle of goddamned nowhere?'

'She likes you, Mr Tracy.'

'Yes. She does. She's made that abundantly clear. And I just as clearly turned her down.'

Kyrano raised an eyebrow – it was no mean feat to surprise a psychic, but Jeff still managed it now and then. It was part of Jefferson G-for-Goddammit Tracy's charm. 'How did you do that?'

'I told her I didn't want to mix business and pleasure.'

Kyrano looked impressed at the strength of Jeff's resolve. 'And what did Miss Penelope say?'

Jeff groaned in remembrance and rubbed at his face with his hands. 'You don't want to _know_ what she said. Penny has a hard time taking 'no' for an answer.' He looked plaintively at his friend. 'Am I making a mistake, Kyrano? Because I feel like whatever I do I'm making a mistake – I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't.'

Kyrano lowered the slippers to the floor. 'The situation is difficult,' he agreed, coming to sit beside Jeff on the bed.

'_Complicated_ is what it is.'

'Complex, perhaps. Lady Penelope is an employee and a colleague, but many marriages have come about from – '

'Marriage!' Jeff was aghast. 'I don't even want to _kiss_ the woman!'

'Would it be so wrong to kiss Lady Penelope?'

'Well… no.' Jeff was embarrassed to find himself blushing. 'Tell you the truth, Kyrano, but we've already kissed.'

Kyrano nodded, because that was something he _did_ already know – he was psychic, remember. 'How was it?' he asked. He was, after all, also a man.

'Whaddaya mean how was it? It was nice, of course!' Jeff could feel his ears burning. 'Of course it was nice… A beautiful woman, in the prime of her youth kisses you like that… But it doesn't count, Kyrano. She was drunk.'

Kyrano said nothing, but even Kyrano's silences could be sagely.

Jeff sighed. He stared down at the carpet. 'I'm not ready, I guess.'

'For what?'

'For_ love,_ Kyrano.'

'Surely it's too early to talk about love, Mr Tracy.'

'Then what the hell have we been talking about all this time?'

Now it was Kyrano's turn to sigh, as though he couldn't believe his friend could really be this dumb. 'I was talking about having a good time – '

'Kyrano!' Jeff blurted, scandalised. His old friend was full of surprises. He was also full of zen and platitudes – and look-out, here they come now.

'Take one day at a time,' Kyrano said, 'and the universe will reveal its intent.'

'If it's meant to be,' Jeff added, quoting every desperate lovelorn man ever, 'then it's meant to be.'

Kyrano smiled his agreement. 'You overthink things, Mr Tracy. Just relax and let Nature take her course.'

'And if Penny forces Nature's hand?'

'Then go with the flow.'

Jeff's lips quirked. 'Alright then. I'll take the good slippers.'

Kyrano got up from the bed. 'Very well, Mr Tracy.'

Jeff stayed sitting where he was and stared down at his knees. They were good knees, he reflected. They'd bounced him around on the moon, and they'd bounced his five lumps of sons, and they could still spring him up the hundred-and-forty-odd steps from the island's underground hangar without so much as a pop or a crack. He wasn't an old man – not yet. And Penny wasn't that young, either. Sure, she liked to tell people she was twenty-seven, but he'd seen her passport and she was pushing a good few years over thirty. Maybe they _could_ make this work. Or maybe he should take Kyrano's advice and simply have himself a good time –

'Knock knock,' came a disembodied voice from the corridor.

Jeff roused from his inner monologue. 'Come in.'

Gordon's head appeared around the still-open door. 'C'mon Dad, you know the rules. You're supposed to say _who's there_.'

Jeff sighed. He'd been having himself a good time talking to his knees. 'Who's there,' he inquired reluctantly.

'Déjà.'

'Déjà who?'

'Knock knock.'

Jeff stared at his son. Penny was right – maybe their humour _was_ odd, after all. 'What do you want, Gordon?'

'Grandma's got the oven going. She's wondering if you want to take a cake to Bonka Bonka.'

'What did you say?'

'Do you want to take some cake?'

'No, after that.'

'Huh?'

'You said "Bonka Bonka".'

'I did?' Gordon looked contemplative. 'Huh. A slip of the tongue, Dad. Honestly. You Freudians.'

* * *

'Parker tells me,' Jeff said, trying not to be distracted by the sight of a hot-and-bothered Penelope in a pair of dusty jodhpurs, 'that you've been out rounding sheep.'

Penelope stood on her toes to peck him lightly on the cheek. 'Jeff, it's _so_ good to see you. And yes I have been out rounding up sheep.' Perturbation crossed her face as Parker lumbered in from the dirt track that served as an airfield. 'But I seem to be missing one. I counted only 200,006.'

Parker sighed out loud, but whether from the fact that he'd been carting Jeff's luggage through the hot sun or from the fact that he'd been hearing about the missing sheep all afternoon, Jeff couldn't tell.

'Well, if you have rounded them up,' Jeff persisted, 'you should have 200,010 of them.'

' I _did_ round them up, and there were only 200,006.' A faint crease formed across Penny's brow. 'There are supposed to be 200,007 of them Jeff. I don't know where you're getting the 200,010 figure from.'

'No,' Jeff said, with a touch of mortification**.** 'I meant – it was supposed to be a joke. Rounding up? Sheep? Numbers? Get it?'

'I see,' Penny said. 'There's that humour again.' She wiped an errant strand of hair from her face and it looked, for a moment, like she might be regretting that she'd invited him to stay.

Parker, at least, could take a joke. He dropped Jeff's suitcases onto the linoleum and chortled appreciatively. 'Nice h'one, sir.' Seemed Penny's right-hand-man had forgiven him for the bristols incident. 'I 'eard me a good one yesterday down h'at the local waterin' 'ole,' he said.

'You mean,' Jeff ignored the deepening expression of dismay on Penny's face, 'the one about the sheep that walked into a baa?'

'No ho,' Parker snorted loudly. 'H'I mean what 'appens when you cross h'a kangaroo with h'a sheep?' He paused dramatically before delivering the punch-line. 'You h'end up with h'a woolly jumper!'

Jeff suppressed a grin as Parker's joke sank like a stone. Apparently Penelope had trouble with cross-species interactions.

'Parker,' Penelope said. 'Please. No more puns for today.' She turned to Jeff. 'And please don't encourage him. Life is difficult enough in this wild and godforsaken land. I would hate to think I'm going to have to spend the next few days listening to bad jokes.'

'Bad jokes?' Jeff was hurt. He'd been working on his puns ever since Parker had told him Penny was rounding up sheep. He watched as the chauffeur shrugged his shoulders and trudged despondently away with the luggage. Penny clearly thought his jokes were bad, and his older sons were always chiding him that Gordon and Alan had to get their lame sense of humour from somewhere – maybe it was time for Jeff to re-evaluate his talent.

Penny graced him with an apologetic smile. She looked beautiful, standing there with her hair baked to straw by the sun and a sprinkling of desert dust sticking to the perspiration on her nose. There were even delicate patches of sweat seeping out from under her arms, and droplets of it glistening on the exposed skin of her décolletage.

'Ah...' Jeff reflected that Nature was well and truly taking its course. 'Penny,' he said with feeling, because he realised that he actually meant it. 'It sure is good to see you again.'

'Thank you, Jeff. And I am so pleased you managed to get away for a while.' She lifted an arm to brush at that errant strand of hair again, the movement making her breasts strain against the too-tight cotton of her shirt. 'Now tell me all about the boys,' she said, the mention of Jeff's children totally cancelling out the effect of her nipples struggling against the stripes of the polished cotton. 'How are they? And Tin-Tin and Kyrano?'

Jeff's mood deflated almost instantaneously – if you consider the speed of light to be almost instantaneous at these kinds of distances, that is. 'That reminds me...' he said. 'I'd better call them and tell them I've arrived.'

Penny put out a hand to forestall him. 'Look, Jeff,' she said. 'The reason I invited you here was that you needed a rest. Now, I'll allow you to make this one call, then you must promise me that you'll try to forget all about the island.'

'Okay, Penny,' he acquiesced reluctantly, 'but I'd be happier checking in now and then.'

'It's quite probable,' she continued, still trying to dissuade him, 'that Scott and the boys are in bed.'

Jeff snorted – fat chance. Scott had finally got his ass into Jeff's chair, and he wouldn't be giving it up for anything as insignificant as a bed. 'If I know Scott, he'll be wide awake.'

Penny stared stubbornly at him, and then stepped aside to let him pass. 'Very well.' She indicated an oversize communication array that was installed to the left of the entrance-way. 'One call, and then dinner.'

* * *

Dinner had been… unexpected. Parker, it turned out, had done a stint in the kitchens during his incarceration at Dartmore and was a dab hand with a frypan. In the space of thirty minutes he'd dished out three plates of something he called bangers h'and mash – hardly the sort of fare that Jeff thought the lady of the manor would appreciate, but as long as Penny had a glass of wine in her hand she apparently would eat anything – and then sat himself down at the table with them to eat. And eat Parker did, with the same lip-smacking gusto he used to attack the bottle of beer he dragged out of the refrigerator for his after-dinner digestive.

Jeff had smiled at Penny over the sausages, making conversation between the lip-smacking and watching surreptitiously whenever she sipped daintily at her drink. There were pink lipstick-prints forming on the edge of her glass, little kisses that she left on the crystal with every delicate sip. And it looked like Penny _did_ remember that embarrassing fumble in London – or at least some of it – because she abandoned the wine after dinner and insisted that Parker make her a cup of tea that he presented to her in the living room.

'Thank you, Parker,' she said from her perch in front of the fireplace, digging out a cigarette and a book and leaning back to make herself comfortable.

'Yes, M'lady,' Parker replied automatically, and then tuning the television in to an inane music show and plonking himself down comfortably in front of the box. Jeff watched as Parker hunkered down his seat, glass of beer in hand and music blaring in his face, and hugging the arms of the chair as though the damn thing were about to take off.

'Er,' Jeff said, glancing out the window at the moon shining romantically in a deep purple sky. Upon contemplation of his bangers he'd decided he would ask Penelope out for an evening stroll. He'd planned to take her by the hand as they walked, and point up at the moon and tell her about his landing on the Mare Imbrium, and what it felt like to see the Earth shining round in the fathomless lunar sky. But when he'd made the suggestion she'd given him a sober _'no, thank you' _in return, while at the same time Parker had waved his hands wildly in the air and gone on about the size of the mosquitoes (as big as bats) and the bats (bigger than cats) and the dingos (the size of a tyrannosaurus rex and twice as bloody hungry) roaming rampant in the dark.

It was no wonder Penny had to count her sheep every morning – Jeff was surprised the majority of them hadn't already been carried off by a flock of pterodactyls. Flock? Herd? Were they lizards or birds? Jeff grumped despondently as he flopped himself down on the couch, alternately glaring at Parker and gazing at Penelope as she studiously turned the pages of her book.

_She was playing hard to get, _Jeff realised as he leaned forward to grab a cigar from the coffee table. She'd been feigning disinterest ever since he got here – seemed like she'd dragged him all the way out into the middle of nowhere just to punish him for that night in London. Jeff lit the cigar and blew a lazy stream of smoke in Parker's general direction.

_Penelope was playing him like a goddamned harp._

Well.

_He'd _show_ her. _

Jeff slid slowly sideways on the couch, closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep. Maybe he did fall asleep, because he was surprised to find himself startling when Parker belched. Jeff cracked his eyes open a smidge to watch Penelope seductively inhaling on her cigarette. _Like a goddamned harp..._

'_We interrupt this broadcast for a newsflash...'_

Jeff didn't budge from his position on the couch.

'… _reports are coming in that a gas field in the Atlantic has been penetrated…'_

Interesting choice of words, Jeff thought. He watched surreptitiously as Penny put down her book and reclined languidly back in her chair.

'… _a fire jet over two hundred feet high is threatening shipping and drilling rigs in the area. The cause of the fire jet has not been firmly established, but it's believed to be connected with an atomic explosion during World Navy manoeuvres. And now, back to your music program...'_

'Shall I wake Mister Tracy?' Parker asked over the resurgent blare of music.

'You _dare, _Parker!'

Jeff was touched. Penelope actually sounded concerned.

'Mr Tracy has come here to get away from those kinds of problems,' Penny was saying. She shifted indignantly on her chair to face the chauffeur and the collar of her shirt slipped slightly apart – Jeff could see a sliver of creamy flesh newly revealed in the V.

'It's okay, Parker.' Jeff opened his eyes for a better look. 'I heard the newscast.'

'Jeff,' Penny said. 'I thought you were asleep.'

'No, Penny.' Jeff heaved himself upright and inspected his long-dead cigar. 'You can relax,' he said. ' I'm not worried about that fire-jet. No-one has been hurt and Scott will keep a check on the situation. He'll realise that this is not a job for International Rescue.'

'You're right, of course.' Penny stubbed out her cigarette. 'You always know what's best, Jeff.' She got up out of her chair and stretched. 'Good night.'

* * *

Jeff sat on the bed and looked around at the guest room. He could see it better in the morning light – wood paneling on the walls, white shag rugs on the floor, and the whole thing at least a hundred years out of style. Jeff glanced ruefully down at the robe his mother had given him – which was also, he thought, a hundred years out of style.

'Jeff,' came Penny's tentative voice at the door. 'Jeff? Are you awake?'

_Great, _Jeff thought. He was looking his worst – uncombed, unshaven, bags under his eyes and wearing his ugliest robe. Not even the good slippers were going to offset that. 'Sure, Penny,' he said with as much chirp as he could muster. May as well let her see what she was missing out on. 'Come in.'

'Why Jeff,' Penny exclaimed as the door swung open on its hinges. 'You look as if you've been awake all night.'

'Ah, I guess I have, Penny,' Jeff admitted.

Penelope scuffed delicately towards him across the shag rug – she was draped in a bathrobe and, Jeff realised with a frisson of scandalised surprise, apparently nothing else. _S_ilk and chiffon, lilac and ruffles, Penny drifted across the room like a delectable gift all wrapped in a bow that Jeff suddenly, desperately, longed to tug open.

Jeff stood up, because if he stayed seated any longer he wouldn't be able to. 'I couldn't sleep,' he lied, 'thinking about that fire-jet report.'

What he _should_ have told her was the truth – that he'd tossed and turned all night thinking about her, thinking about _them,_ and wondering if he should creep into her moonlit room and beg her for another chance.

'But,' Penny said, oblivious to Jeff's internal workings, 'you said yourself that Scott wouldn't put International Rescue into operation.'

'I know, Penny, but – ' Jeff looked down into her big blue eyes and guiltily pushed on with the deceit. 'Ah, I think I'll just call Base. Just to put my mind at rest.'

'Please, Jeff.' Penny blinked up at him. 'You must relax and leave it to the boys.'

Jeff turned away from her frilly temptation and stared bleakly out at the pale Australian morning. 'You don't understand, Penny.'

'Yes I do, Jeff.'

_Oh no, you don't._ He heard her footsteps on the carpet as she came up close and laid a tentative, delicate hand upon his back. He could smell violets and roses, and her fingers were warm against his shoulder.

'You're a good father and you're naturally anxious.' Penny gently rubbed his shoulder. 'Now please, _please_ relax. Will you do that? Just for me?'

He turned to look at her, his eyes moving to the bathrobe and lingering on the lilac frills. 'Okay, Penny.' Jeff sighed and moved towards the bed. 'You win. You're absolutely right. I'll get some rest now… I guess I am kinda tired.'

He sat down on the blankets and looked up at her in her chiffon, imagined tugging at the bow of her bathrobe and watching all that marvelous froufrou fall away. Her skin, he knew, would glow like the finest alabaster once it was revealed to the cool morning light. In his mind's eye he could see the perfect mounds of her breasts, their quivering peaks crowned with the glorious and delicate roses of her nipples. He imagined the rounded peach of her ass, could almost feel it beneath his fingers, could feel his hands cupping the cheeks roughly as he –

'You know,' Jeff squeaked and then cleared his throat. 'Parker would be horrified to find us alone and, uh, … in my room.' He smiled flirtatiously – he hoped. 'And in our bathrobes.' He was regretting he hadn't taken Kyrano's advice and brought along the good robe instead of the ugly checkerboard thing he was currently wearing.

Penny looked amused at his teenage awkwardness and settled herself down beside him in a pouf of lavender frills. 'Parker never has to find out.' Her thigh grazed delicately against his own.

'Parker _always_ finds out.' Jeff turned on the bed to look at her. The sun was higher now, slanting in through the window and emphasising the delicate tones of her skin. 'He's nosey, that one.'

She laughed as their knees bumped congenially, and Jeff said, 'if cows laughed, would milk come out their noses?'

Penelope stopped laughing. 'Are you calling me a cow, Jeff?'

'_No,' _he backpedalled, mortified. 'It was just that we were talking about noses, and you were laughing, and it reminded me of a joke I heard and _no,'_ he protested, 'of _course_ not! I didn't mean that _you – '_

She put her hand on his arm to stop him. 'You're cute, Jeff,' she said to him. 'But you really aren't funny.'

He chuckled and blushed and reached out a finger to trace the cupid's bow of her mouth. It was pink, and it was soft, and she didn't pull away. It was time, Jeff decided, for Nature to get the upper hand. 'May I kiss you, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward?'

'Of course you may.' Penny leaned towards him, close enough that he could smell the lacquer in her hair. 'Anything to stop this stream of bad puns – '

He kissed her. Chastely at first, and then, emboldened by the parting of her lips he pulled her close, his tongue meeting hers in a gentle, tentative, exploration.

'Penny,' he sighed, pulling away. 'Are you sure about this?'

'Of course, Jeff.' She was so enticing as she smiled at him, with her lips still wet from his kiss and the first blush of pash-rash appearing on her chin. 'I don't know whatever took you this long.'

'Because I'm an idiot,' he murmured as he leant in to kiss her again. 'A goddamned fool,' he wanted to say, but her mouth was on his own, her hand coming up to brush his cheek, her pink-painted fingernails raking roughly through his morning bristles and making him want to push her down onto the bed and find out what lay beneath all that lilac and chiffon.

Instead he broke away from her hungry mouth and said 'I have a hole in my pyjamas.' And then he _did_ push her down onto the bed. 'Guess where.'

* * *

Jeff nearly choked on his breakfast when the news report came through. He'd been caught out, basking as he was in a glorious post-coital afterglow and grinning a Cheshire Cat grin as he flirted with Penny across the breakfast table. He was also ignoring the invisible daggers Parker was sending him from the direction of the stove, and thinking up questionable puns about bangers and mash as the radio channeled a thin stream of the Cass Carnaby Five. You know. _Before_ they broke up. And then _this_ had happened:

'_We interrupt this radio program for a news report. The fire-jet burning out of control in the Atlantic is now under control, thanks to the efforts of International Rescue, who capped the jet late last – '_

Jeff hadn't waited for the end of the report, hadn't even excused himself before he was on the blower to Scott, bawling the kid out the same way he'd bawled him out when Scott had rolled the tractor towing Stumpy Henderson's stupid boat along the irrigation canal. That idiot wasn't called Stumpy for nothing.

'_Scott!' _Jeff bellowed in a tone of voice that he was fairly certain was connected directly to his eldest son's anal sphincter. _'This is your father!' _There. That was sure to have Scott's bowels loosening. 'I've just heard the newscast – International Rescue capped that fire-jet in the Atlantic!'

'Sure,' came Scott's voice over the short-wave. There was no indication of any sphincters opening. The kid even had the nerve to sound smug.'We did, Dad, and we were successful.'

'That's got nothing to _do_ with it,' Jeff barked. 'You should _never_ have got involved!'

'Well, listen, father – '

'No, _you_ listen son! International Rescue is not just a lot of machinery for putting out fires. It's a serious business!'

Scott was on the back foot now, Jeff could hear it in his voice. 'But,' Scott persisted, 'that fire could have caused a _disaster – '_

Jeff would have liked to roll his eyes heavenward at the inanity of that remark, but his eyeballs were otherwise occupied, locked as they were in a rictus of rage. 'We're not dealing with _chances,_ son – we can't afford to make mistakes!' What part of this was Scott not getting? How many times did he have to be told? 'I'm flying home _now,'_ Jeff barked and then cut the connection. He didn't want to hear any more of it. He was furious. Fuming. _Insane_ with anger. He'd finally worked up the nerve to take the next step with Penny, and now_ this! _He stalked away from the radio, acutely aware of Penny's eyes following him across the room.

'Are you really angry, Jeff?'

'Sure!' he barked. He'd been doing a lot of barking in the last five minutes. He supposed he ought to stop before Penelope fixed him up with a collar. Not that that would be a _bad_ thing… 'Aww heck no. I'm not angry with Scott, Penny. Just worried.'

'You upset him, you know.'

'Now look here, Penny.' Jeff was coming close to barking again. 'I meant every word of what I said on that radio.'

'Including,' she asked, 'the bit about flying straight home?'

'_Sure_ I did!'

'Then I think you're quite wrong.'

Jeff raised an eyebrow. It wasn't often that anybody told him he was wrong.

'You'll make a big mistake if you do that,' Penny continued, in a tone that made him wonder exactly what mistake it was he would be making. 'Don't you see? You've _made_ your point – Scott won't go out again now unless it's absolutely vital.'

'Huh,' Jeff said, considering. 'I guess you're right,' he relented._ It must be love, _he thought – _or else that trick she did with her little finger_ – because he wouldn't be backing down otherwise. 'Scott must run the show on his own,' he acquiesced, 'without any interference from me.'

A smile of satisfaction flashed briefly across Penny's face. 'I'll call Scott and tell him,' she said, just as Parker appeared on the landing with Jeff's bags. Old Nosey must have been listening in.

'H'I've packed your things, Mister Tracy. Shall h'I put them h'in the h'aircraft?'

'No thanks, Parker,' Jeff told him. 'I'm staying for a couple more days.'

Parker glared. _'Pack_ the cases,' he muttered as he turned away, _'h'un_pack the cases. You think some people would make h'up their _minds…'_

_Uh-oh, _thought Jeff. It was the bristols incident, all over again.

* * *

Jeff puffed the pillow behind his head, settled back on his lounger and looked up at the tree that towered over the patio. It was a branching eucalyptus, scraggly with leaves and blossoming yellow in its crown, with its upper branches loaded with birds that started screeching the moment Parker lobbed unceremoniously out onto the patio, sat himself down on a deck-chair and switched the radio on to full.

Jeff took a swig of his drink, Parker, the radio, and the screeching birds swiftly forgotten as Penny sashayed toward him across the pavers. She grinned conspiratorially as she bent to fluff the cushions of the lounger beside his, Jeff watching through his sunglasses as she fluffed and plumped and failing to suppress a grin as her ass wiggled suggestively in his direction. He took another sip of his drink – life at Bonga Bonga had returned to a semblance of leisurely normal, once Jeff had recovered from his snit.

'What are you reading,' he inquired as Penny finished rearranging the cushions and delicately settled herself down on the lounger beside him.

'Night of the Herbivores.' Penny flipped the paperback over so that Jeff could read the cover.

Jeff squinted through his sunglasses. 'What's it about?' he asked as Penny flipped the book back into her lap and crossed her long, lean legs at the ankles.

'It's about,' Penny told him, quite matter-of-factly, 'a vegetarian who is so averse to meat that she develops a fear of penises.'

'I see.' Jeff sipped at his drink and he didn't even blink. 'And, er, how is she surmounting her problem?'

Penny grinned impishly. 'Well Jeff, there have been any number of well-endowed young men who have volunteered their services to break her of this phobia. But, unfortunately, the therapy has so far proven futile. I'm afraid our heroine is just going to have to keep on trying.'

'Well.' Jeff returned his now-empty glass to the side-table. 'That's just poor psychology, isn't it. Instead of wasting time trying to desensitise herself, she needs to go out and get herself a suitable vegetable substitute.'

'Oh?' Penny's eyebrows rose suggestively. 'Can you think of any?'

'Of course I can – I grew up on a farm,' he said, and then checked himself. _Say, wasn't that the same book Scott had been so engrossed in yesterday?_ Probably borrowed it from Tin-Tin, but _still... _

A cold sweat broke out across Jeff's brow. Why was Scott reading a romance novel? What if _all_ his sons had been reading that book? What the hell sort of sick freaks was he sharing his island with? Jeff lay back on the recliner and tried to get his blood pressure down, although the ridiculous music blaring out of Parker's radio wasn't helping.

'Jeff?'

Jeff licked at his lips 'I'm okay, Penny.' he said, hoping she couldn't see the sweat breaking out across his brow. 'I'm just a little tired…didn't get much sleep last night, you know.'

'Parker,' Penelope called out. 'Mr Tracy is trying to rest. Can't you lower the volume of that radio?'

'Very well, M'lady.' Parker reached for the dial but was stopped in his tracks.

'_We interrupt this program to bring you a newsflash…'_

Jeff's blood pressure nudged up again – these goddamn newsflashes were going to give him a stroke.

'…_the drilling rig Seascape is near collapse. Two rig crewmen are trapped at the base of the Seascape in a diving sphere. It is understood International Rescue is on the scene. Now back to our programming…'_

Jeff lumbered himself out of the deck chair, glad to find he still had feeling in both sides of his body. 'There's a real emergency, Penny,' he told her. 'The boys'll need my help.'

To her credit, she didn't try and talk him out of it. She didn't even have to ask Parker to pack Jeff's bags – Ole' Nosey had been listening in and was already tripping in the direction of the house.

* * *

Jeff corrected Tracy 1's course and took the little jet down another thousand feet. They'd passed the worst of the turbulence kicked up by the warm South Pacific afternoon, and there was nothing but clear air ahead. Ten more minutes and he would see Tracy island glowing green on the horizon, and Jeff would feel the usual warm fuzzies at the sight – coming home was always the best part about going away, and he sighed contentedly as Penny's warm body snuggled up close beside him.

'Did you enjoy your holiday, Jeff?'

Jeff looked at Penny through the blue lenses of his aviators. He definitely felt relaxed – it'd been barely twenty-four hours since he'd left International Rescue behind, but he felt better after a single morning in her arms than he'd felt in the last ten years.

'Yes, Penny,' he smiled at her. 'I had a wonderful time.' He turned his eyes back to the endless horizon. 'It was a great idea, inviting me to Bonka Bonka for a – '

'_What _did you say?' she cut in.

'Uh,' he said. 'I had a wonderful time?'

'After that.'

'It was a great idea?'

'After that.'

'Inviting me?' he squeaked desperately.

She snorted delicately through her nose. 'Jefferson Tracy,' she said. 'You are as incorrigible as your sons.'

Jeff breathed a sigh of relief at his narrow escape. 'They're definitely chips off the old block,' he agreed, and then muttered darkly, 'whether I like it or not.'

'Perhaps it's just as well you've sequestered them on a deserted island,' she said. 'The world probably couldn't cope with so many Tracy men roaming wild.'

Jeff chortled his agreement before sobering. 'About the boys…' he ventured. 'Maybe it would be best not to tell them about… well, you know. At least not yet.'

'Of course, Jeff.' Penny reached up a hand to rub affectionately at his bristles. 'I understand. The children have been without a mother for so long it wouldn't do to get their hopes up.'

'Er… yeah,' Jeff said, wondering if Penny had been talking to John. And then, 'no, that's not it.'

'Then why?'

'Because they're animals!' he blurted. 'They like nothing better than tormenting me, and this is only going to give them more ammunition. Honestly, Penny, they're driving me to an early grave!'

'I see.' Penelope raised an eyebrow. 'I didn't realise they were such barbarians,' she told him seriously. 'I'm afraid I may have to rethink our situation…'

'What?' he sputtered. He stared at her, speechless.

'Oh Jeff,' she laughed. 'Relax. I'm teasing! Even if you were chief of a marauding band of cannibals, I still would have fallen in love with you.'

'Huh.' Jeff smiled lopsidedly as she leaned across to placate him with a kiss. 'Famous last words,' he said. 'I haven't yet found anything that those boys won't eat.'

She was still laughing as the island appeared on the horizon – a delightful, bell-like giggle that had Jeff grinning from ear-to-ear. 'Now remember,' he said as he opened the comms for approach. 'Not a word.'

'Of course, darling.' She leaned back in her seat and beamed indulgently at him, a smile that sent a jolt of electricity straight to Jeff's groin.

'Tracy to Base.' Jeff tried to keep the quiver out of his voice. 'Permission to land.'

'Base to Tracy,' came back Scott's voice. 'Permission refused. Thunderbirds 1 and 2 are due to arrive any time.'

'Well,' Jeff said, nonplussed. He wasn't sure what was more annoying – the fact he'd been refused permission to land on his own goddamned island, or the tone of authoritative smugness that had fairly saturated his eldest son's voice. 'How do you like that?' he groused to Penny.

'I like it very much, Jeff.' Penny rested her hand upon his thigh. 'Scott is controlling things correctly. Just as his father does when _he's_ on duty.' She puffed a sexy breath of air into the word 'duty', and there was that jolt of electricity again, straight to Jeff's groin.

'Seems to me,' Jeff squirmed in his seat, 'that _you're_ the one that likes being in control whenever I'm on, uh, duty.'

Penny laughed and squeezed his thigh suggestively. 'So what do we do now?' she asked as they overflew the island.

'I guess we'll be stuck in a holding pattern until we have permission to land,' Jeff replied as he adjusted the trim. The sun reflected brightly off the villa as they passed overhead and headed back out to sea. 'We shouldn't have to wait too long before we're back on the ground again, but until then we'll have to entertain ourselves.'

'Jeff darling?' Penny was leaning back against the side of the cockpit, one arm draped casually along the window and the other hand moving higher up along his thigh. He couldn't see her eyes beneath her sunglasses, but he suspected they may have held an impish gleam. 'You know what I've always wanted to do?'

'I'm sure I can guess,' he replied warily. Penny, he had discovered, was a woman of appetites.

'I'll save you the trouble.' Penny grinned as she unbuckled her seatbelt and clambered across the divide between them. Tracy 1's wing dipped as her ass bumped across the stick and Jeff found himself hastily righting the plane.

'_Penny,' _he protested, genuinely alarmed and envisaging his sons pulling his body out of the wreckage with Lady Penelope skewered ignominiously on his lap. _'No!'_ He tried to get her off him but her hand was already well-entrenched beneath his fly. 'It's too dangerous, Penny! The cockpit's too _small – '_

'_Dad!'_ came John's scandalised voice over the still-open comms. 'Did you just say the word _cock?'_


End file.
